I started my first Linkedin advertising campaign yesterday. It is rather impressive what you are able to do with advertising on Linkedin.

Here is one version of the ad from my first campaign.

I say one version because the program allows you to create multiple variations of the add to test different offers and wording. This is an excellent feature.

With Linkedin DirectAds you are also able to select who sees your advertisement by

- the company size that the person works for

- the person's job function/department

- the industry the person works in

- the seniority the person has at the company

- the person's gender

- the person's age

- the geographic location of the person down to the specific city

With Linked in there are some clear advantages over other online advertising methods such as google adwords.

For example with Google you are not allowed you advertise only in select cities. Google does allow you to exclude cities from a province you selected but is capped at 60. This causes a problem if the province you want to advertise in has over 100 cities and you only want to advertise in one or two.

Another nice feature about linked in is that it allows you to target people by their characteristics. For example by limiting your advertising to select age groups of position levels is allows you to be very targeted in your advertising, especially for business to business advertising.

And finally, when setting up your campaign Linkedin DirectAds will actually calculate the total target audience that will be able to see your ads based on the profiling criteria you have selected. I find this information great as an advertiser as it helps you understand your reach and frequency. Google only gives you searches for each keyword, which is not users. This means that certain individuals could search for the given key word multiple times. Given this their is no way to be confident on the true size of your audience.

Overall I was very impressed so far with the functionality offered by Linkedin DirectAds. The true test will come though from the actual advertising results of the campaign.

The one disappointment I have with Linkedin DirectAds is that there was a $5.00 account set up fee that I was not aware of. This must have been in the small print that I did not see. Given it is only $5.00 it did not change my opinion of the program overall, it just annoyed me somewhat that they would try and hide this up front.

************updated February 7th, 2014**************

Upon further review Linkedin advertising has been determined to have a negative ROI. I fear this will always be the case unless they change how their advertising product works. Read more here.

Most likely your best bet will be to spend on search engine optimization instead at it consistently has a good ROI. To learn more about SEO services in Waterloo, Ontario click here.